Tiny Little Fractures
by Astoria Potter
Summary: One-shot, COMPLETE - He watched her, she knew. He watched her now, like he always had. :Claire reflects on her past with Topher.:


Story: "Tiny Little Fractures."

Status: One-shot, COMPLETE

Author: Astoria Potter

Rating: PG-13 (Language, Violence)

Pairings: Topher/Claire

Genre: Friendship/Hurt

Beta: Alexandria Malfoy

Spoilers: Up to 1x 04, "Gray Hour." Some spoilers from the trailer for 1 x 05. This is just what I thought would have been Topher and Claire's back-story.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made. I don't own Fox, Mutant Enemy, or any of the characters. I just like _Dollhouse_ and think that everyone should watch it. :)

Summary: He watched her, she knew. He watched her now, like he always had. (Claire reflects on her past with Topher.)

This is my first _Dollhouse _fic, and I am quite excited. Reviews are welcome and would be much appreciated. Please no flames, though. Thank you to Alexandria Malfoy, who beta-ed this for me even though she's super busy. :)

Chapter 1: Tiny Little Fractures

A/N: The title of this story comes from the song "Tiny Little Fractures," by Snow Patrol. This is just a short little one-shot I thought up of after my exam today.

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He watched her, she knew. He watched her now, like he always had. Even as he chatted with his assistant, Ivy, about some programming nonsense for the Actives, Ivy's doting gaze upon him, his eyes followed her.

She remembered the first time that they had met as vividly as though it had occurred a mere hour before. They had been small children then. Samuel Williams had been bullying her on the playground, and her head had been hung down. Topher had come up out of nowhere and stood up for her, even though he'd been no match for Samuel. The two boys had ended up in the principal's office.

Back then, they were both so innocent, so vulnerable; always sticking their nose inside books and were the shunned ones at school. She'd wanted to be a doctor, and he - well, Topher had always been a genius. Their alienation made them best friends.

She didn't know how long they'd - _she_ - had had feelings for one another. At first, it was more like a sibling-ship. But when Adele had come and recruited the two of them to work for the top-secret Dollhouse, it had seemed like a dream. She'd thought that they would have grown closer. Instead, it only served to make them further apart.

She questioned his morals. Programming people? She was the doctor, of course; she always had been. She healed people, and now she healed the blank Actives when they were injured. She performed checkups, medical examinations, chatted with the Handlers. They'd both known what they'd been signing up for. But it was just the way that he talked about it that made her uncomfortable. He would joke about it with Ivy and the others -- make it sound like it was nothing, like there was no moral question to any of it. It was like she didn't even know her best friend anymore.

They began to grow distant. Still, she felt him watching her. After work, he would ask her out to have dinner with him, like they would have done in college, in high school, in middle school, in elementary school - as friends, of course. They both couldn't have had it any other way. But now, she always politely refused. She didn't know why she'd done it at the time. Before, she would have eagerly gone.

One day, when she was so immersed in some lab reports that she hadn't noticed him coming in, he tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around and let out a startled yell. "Topher! What're you doing here?"

He looked weary. "You've been avoiding me."

"I have not," she sniffed. "I've just been really busy."

"Claire, look, I know you don't like my job. You don't have to say anything about it. But think about what-"

"It's not your job, it's you," she let out. There. She'd finally said it.

"What?" he sounded astounded by her response. "What do you mean, me?"

"Have you seen the way you're acting now that you're working here?" she spat out. "It's like you don't even care about other people."

"We _help _people here, Claire!" he cried out.

"Topher, it's not helping people by making them do things that they normally wouldn't be obliged to do."

"They _signed up_ for this!" he exclaimed, clearly very taken aback. "They knew what they were in for! And it's not my fault! Adele is in charge here, not me!"

"Oh, and I suppose it's your fault you signed up to work here?!" she was screaming at him now, but she didn't care anymore. She was just so tired of it all.

"Of course it's not! What's going on, Claire?" his eyes narrowed. "When we talked about working here, you sounded so excited. I don't know if you're-"

"Never mind," she said. "I don't want to speak to you ever again, Topher. Is that clear?"

He was running after her as she hastily exited the office. "Claire, please-"

"I don't want to see you ever again," she shot.

And he didn't follow her, after that. He stood there. Just a broken, sad, little boy. Not Topher, genius Programmer. Just Topher, lost and vulnerable young man. She could see that her words had hurt him both physically and emotionally.

Later, she would try to apologize. But he seemed to take her last words to heart, and avoided having to be in the same room with her unless it was to perform a checkup on the Dolls or Adele forced all of them into a huge meeting. ``````Everyone noticed, but refrained from saying anything. Adele just rolled her eyes, and their boss would go off muttering something about how people always grew apart.

Still, she knew that he was watching her. With worry about the way that she threw herself into work, now more than ever before.

And then it happened.

No one knew how, or why, or who had helped. But Alpha became crazy. And then he went on a rampage. She'd been chatting with the other doctor when he had suddenly burst in.

She'd looked up, confused. "Did you get injured, Alpha? Here, let-"

But the next thing she was aware of was people screaming at her to run. And run she did. But Alpha was fast, and he was quick. And he'd killed someone in eight seconds with a knife, and the next thing that she knew he was after her.

She was running faster than she ever had in her entire life. The safest place that she could think of was Adele's office, where all the security needed to be alerted. They needed to be warned. They needed to be safe. She was almost there-

And then she felt a hand on her, spinning her around, forcing her to face him, and she was screaming. Screaming as she fought back, screaming as her face began to bleed, as the knife drove in, the cuts precise, the cuts that only a medical student or an intelligent serial killer would know how to make. Millimeters. So sharp. They hurt. They hurt so much. She was screaming. She could taste her own blood in her mouth, running all over her face. The pain was too much. She was going to die. Eight seconds, it took. Eight seconds...

And then, suddenly, the sensation of the knife was gone.

She could hear Topher yelling, and now she heard him fighting with Alpha. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene before her. Alpha had a knife, and Topher no weapon - he was no match for the Doll. He was going to get himself killed.

"Run, you fucking idiot!" she shrieked at him. He was still protecting her, right to the very end. "Run!"

But Topher didn't run. He and Alpha were wrestling on the floor, her blood dripping from the knife, and somehow the once-sane Doll had been pushed into the pool.

Topher was grabbing her then, shoving her with him into their boss's office as quickly as possible before Alpha could quickly regain himself and jump out of the pool, and locking the door behind him, making a security call that she was sure had already been made.

She could hear the rings throughout the building, the sound of the panicked Handlers running about, the screams as Alpha killed them all. She heard the other Dolls being murdered while they all showered, while they all attempted to escape. Security had already been alerted by then. She could hear Adele running around giving orders. Topher's shirt was stained with her blood as he walked back into the office.

She was unaware that she was crying.

He held her, whispering something into her ear, sniffling into her hair, wanting to take her to medical. But there was no one there, they both knew. Everyone there had been slaughtered, except for her. She was the lucky one.

So he held her, and she could feel his tears hot in her hair, even as he tried to soothe her.

She didn't know what she was crying for. Maybe it was what she had lost - for herself, the people that she had come to known over these few years, Topher. Maybe it was that Topher had saved her, risking his life to do so, even as she screamed at him to run.

"It's going to be okay," he lied to her as his arms tightened around her. They were alone in the office. No gun, for security hadn't given him one. So they had locked themselves in, hoping that Alpha wouldn't come barging in here and killing them both.

It was ten minutes later that Adele came in and witnessed her face, looking at her in horror. They had gotten her treated after she had met Echo's new Handler, Boyd. Topher held her hand throughout the entire thing, even as she drifted off to a restless but required sleep.

"Stay with me?" she murmured drowsily. She could hear the beat of the monitor.

"Always," he nodded, and then he did the most affectionate thing that he had ever done to her, and kissed her forehead. She wanted to cry. But she had cried too long to do so. She was tired, and she felt sluggish and sapped of all of her strength. She could hear him trying to lull her to sleep, and soon she dreamed, and was dreaming of nothing. Just blackness. She was glad that she didn't. Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, she was sure of that.

It was later that she found out that they had given her morphine and heavily dosed sleeping pills. Topher had ordered more than was necessary, she knew. She was thankful for it.

She knew that he blamed himself for the attack. If he hadn't been absent from his workroom, and Alpha hadn't gone in cunningly and programmed himself into a human weapon, everything would be fine. She wouldn't have cuts on her face. They wouldn't be dead. But they all knew that it wasn't his fault.

But she felt so weak, having to rely on him. So it had gone back to ignoring him, back to how it had been after The Fight. That's how she referred to it, The Fight. Never 'the fight', but 'The Fight', like it was an important event in history. And it was, for her.

He understood why she was doing it, and he never questioned it, but he had Boyd keep a watch on her. Everyone worried over her, but Topher especially.

As she storms into his office for sending Echo and Boyd back on the job a week after the hunting assignment that was probably set up by Alpha, she gets angry. He teases her now, tries to get her to laugh. Talks about how she and Boyd are so alike, of what their babies would be like. Babies. Children. If she and Topher ever had children, they wouldn't be pretty. They would be beautiful, she mused. She was thinking too much and she scolded herself.

She finally looked into the mirror one day. What she was, was a fragment of who she used to be. She was so broken. Her face was a literal jigsaw puzzle. All of those cuts were scars now, but scars they would remain for the whole world to see. Here and now, forever and always.

Broken. So broken.

They said that she was the lucky one; that she should have died.

But she doesn't believe it. She knows that she is, but she can't.

Now, as they watch Echo on assignment as a blind girl, her eyes their camera in the religious compound, he looks at her and gives her a small smile.

She smiles back, and then takes his hand in hers. His eyebrows rise in astonishment. He's surprised at this, she knows. So is she, but she likes it.

It's a start, after all.

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/Finished.

A/N: So, feedback, please? :) *smiles at you all*


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